Transtions

I used to blog about parenting. The main theme in my life since becoming a mother has been “transitions.” Transitions are not always obvious. Many are subtle, done before there is any realization a transition has happened. Unless you live in our house.

Here, transitions are anything but unpronounced. They are loud and messy. There is usually screaming involved. Screaming and kicking and threats and spitting and sometimes even biting. All transitions have rough edges that can catch you unawares and rip you apart. You must be, at all times, wary. You must anticipate a transition before it presents itself, hurtling through the dark corner of your peripheral visi0n and into sight.

This summer was full of transitions. First, there was the season itself. Then camps began. Half day camps, full day camps, away from home camps. All the while, we were preparing for the greatest transition we had yet to face: Kindergarten.

Noah started school on August 8th. The school he attends should be world-renowned for its transitions. The entire staff in the school knows my son by name, greets him cheerily when he arrives at school, is aware that sometimes he needs a little bit extra to get in the headspace that’s so easy for most children. You know, that place where, yeah, that’s overwhelming, but I’m going to tune it out and do my thing. Noah doesn’t tune out stimuli. He absorbs them. And after absorbing them, he immediately tries to wring them out of his spongelike brain. He’s five. Nothing he feels in unusual. But he is articulate, oversized and still learning to self-regulate. It’s difficult for him (for all of us), but he is getting there.

Today he will spend the school day at a farm. He will be outside where the world is biggest and there is space between him and everyone else’s bodies and thoughts. He will ride a bus (a bus!) to the field trip location. His best friend will be there with him. He will swim in a river. He live in the sun.

I can’t wait to pick him up. What a wonderful Friday.

And, as for transitions, I have made mine. I wanted to homeschool, and while that is and will remain a possibility in our lives, I want Noah to stay in school. I am a mother with one child at home instead of two. I am a mother who never believed she could send her child away all day every day. I am a mother who still feels sad for all the moments she’s missing. But I am also a mother who is not selfish.

Noah is in school. I want him to stay there because it offers him benefits I can’t offer him at home. My original reasons for homeschooling were 1) to enjoy the time that only passes once, and 2) to offer my children something better than what the public school system can offer.

But I made that plan before Noah’s school was chartered. I was cemented in that plan when Noah’s Montessori preschool experience brought the family to tears on a daily basis. And my resolve became pliant when the goals of this school emerged. People began to talk. I listened. I considered. I gave it a shot. We were lucky. So many want the few spots in this school. Noah’s name was drawn. We committed to trying, and what a challenging and wonderful try it has been.

Saturday Funnies

Noah loves to tell jokes. While he long ago mastered slapstick, jokes involving logic and punchlines are another story. This morning’s joke for your enjoyment.

N: How does a dirt become alived?

Me: How?

N: It gets punched in the face!

Nude

There is a woman left of me. Pasty but unapologetic, chattering her teeth at her husband one stream of words at a time.

I can tell they are married by the arrangement of their legs under the table: his denim knee extends into the space between her parted, oversized thighs. She shifts her mostly nude legs, issues instructions for the care of their child–a three-year-old boy squeezed between the wall and his heavy, gray-bearded father on a red picnic table bench. I only know he is theirs because he calls them Mama and Daddy.

The boy, I have learned despite not eavesdropping, has used a Port-O-John for the first time. At the park this morning. It didn’t flush. His mother washed his hands with a wet wipe. A disposable wet wipe, the brand and merits of which she illuminates in explicit and alarming detail to this man she’s married.

Either they have been married a long time or not long at all. He is quiet as she speaks, as if he knows the words will pass faster unhindered. He offeres nods and grunts at intervals when she pauses to breathe and scratch her ample and exposed arms. He is committed but noncommittal. And then there is the boy.

“Make sure to wash him before basketball camp.” I imagine the boy stretched from three feet to six, soaring through the air, his parents bending bleachers and shouting, “Defense!” or “Take it to the hoop!”

“Make sure to wipe down his legs,” she is telling her man evenly as his head droops in assent.

Her husband and I anticipate the conversation’s end. He shifts the boy away in casual increments, speaking silence to his son with his eyes. Clearly, he has done all this before. Still, the mother acts as if it will be the first time.

They pay me no attention. I do not, as I had intended upon entering this room in search of solitude, return the favor. Instead, with my peripheral vision, I observe as the boy’s head meets with a wall.

“Watch out.” It is not a cautionary statement. It is belated. It is flat. It is from the father who recognizes that we all must take small spills before we know how to mop up the big ones.

The mother, however, grows rigid with fright. Her arms fly open, her bosom a pillow collecting her son’s bruised head. The boy cries down the canyon of her cleavage. It is a small cry from a large mouth. My son makes this face. It is a false cry. The father and I know that. The mother knows it, too. But, for every mother, there is the knowledge of truth and the knowledge of what could be. She allows her skin to swallow these cries. Clings to her son as if he might crumble. As if she felt the devil knock against her own skull.

The father waits.

The mother holds on. As if the boy might grow up or be lost in just these few moments.

The father waits.

Soon, she will let him out of her sight.